Campaigners for Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president, are introducing the party’s working-class program and activity widely among working people and making good use of the just-published title The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
The book, by V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the Russian Revolution to SWP leaders today, is one of several titles on special offer during the eight-week campaign by the SWP and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the U.K. to win 1,350 new readers to the Militant, sell 1,350 books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries and raise $165,000 for the Militant Fighting Fund. The new book is on special for $5 through June 15.
SWP members Jeanne Fitzmaurice and Jacob Perasso campaigned in Everett, Washington, April 21, days after autoworkers at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen plant voted overwhelmingly for union recognition. “The vote for the United Auto Workers shows that the low point of labor resistance is behind us,” Fitzmaurice told Lisa Black, a member of the International Association of Machinists and a 20-year worker at Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer.
“We’ve been following the UAW fight,” Black said. “We’re preparing to go on strike in September. Boeing used to set the standard for wages in the area but we have people working decades now who can’t afford to buy a home. We can’t survive anymore with inflation. Boeing will try to buy us off with a bonus, but workers are setting aside strike funds.”
“Our paper is featuring a statement by Rachele Fruit defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews,” Perasso told her. On April 13 Iran’s capitalist government unleashed a drone and missile onslaught on Israel, escalating its decadeslong drive to destroy the country and drive Jews out of the region.
“It doesn’t make sense that people say the Jews control everything but yet they are somehow still always targeted,” Black said. She got a year’s subscription to the Militant and a copy of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch.
In the face of the rising violence targeting Jews, the book presents a road forward to end Jew-hatred and all national oppression, by forging proletarian parties able to lead hundreds of millions to fight for workers power, uproot capitalist exploitation and join the fight for a socialist world.
In Montreal, Communist League campaigners sold nine copies of the new book within days of receiving it. Three people bought it at the Bring Them Home Now march April 14, a weekly action in support of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Fatimata Ouedraogo, a day care worker and student, was participating in the march for the first time, along with her two young sons. “I’m worried about a third world war, and I want to understand what is happening,” she told CL member Katy LeRougetel. Ouedraogo got the book and made a contribution toward the Militant Fighting Fund.
“This book explains why it’s important to defend Israel as a refuge for Jewish people,” SWP member Janice Lynn told auto mechanic Noe Mendoza, showing him a copy of the new book, on the porch of his home in Athens, Georgia, April 16.
“It is important to be educated on what is really going on in the world,” Mendoza said. “You can’t believe what you hear in the news.” He bought the book along with the Spanish-language edition of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism, a subscription to the Militant, and made a $5 contribution to the Militant Fighting Fund.
Mendoza told Lynn he was interested in learning more about Rachele Fruit’s presidential campaign, a working-class alternative to Biden, Trump, Kennedy and other capitalist candidates.
“I had coffee with a young worker this morning following his shift as a grocery clerk,” Joe Swanson told the Militant April 22. “He told me a few weeks ago he didn’t want to renew his Militant subscription because of the paper’s coverage on the war in Gaza and what his friends were saying about it.
“We went through the centerfold feature of this week’s issue of the paper, the first chapter of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. He appreciated the discussion, thanked me and renewed his subscription for six months and bought a copy of the book.”
To campaign for Rachele Fruit and other SWP and Communist League candidates, contact the campaign office near you. Donations to the Militant Fighting Fund can be made out to the Militant and sent to 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor, New York, NY 10018, or online at themilitant.com.